In the latest maneuver of the tech industry's ongoing patent wars, Intel has struck a $120m deal with RealNetworks to purchase 190 patents and 170 patent applications, along with what both companies define as "next-generation video codec software".
"Selling these patents to Intel unlocks some of the substantial and unrealized …

I disagree

Real almost certainly has been working on the H.265 code to prepare for being one of the first to market with a version of H.265 that can actually run relatively well on x86. Don't forget that while Real's player software was a nightmare, the codecs themselves were generally standard compliant implementations of H.264 for the past few years.

If Intel intends to support H.262 (mpeg-2), H.264 (AVC) AND H.265 (HEVC) they'll need a bigger codec development team than they currently employ. Getting your hands on the people making a production grade H.265 decoder (to start with) and a production grade H.265 encoder makes a huge amount of sense for a company like Intel. They need all the help they can get preparing for H.265 in hardware since the complexity of that codec has reached the point that implementation in an ASIC may actually no be possible at this time. The logical complexity of the algorithm has grown past pure hardware modeling, but much of it can likely be done in software, so we'll see.

Good riddance RealNetworks! I still remember having to remove your d**n software from a lot of PCs because it was bundled with something useful. Actually I cannot remember exactly why I disliked you so much, but the feeling is still there! :):):)